Only Human

There are days like today when perhaps I'm sick and can't deal with it and it would be a pretty okay day if not for that feeling.

It's that feeling of not wanting to. Not wanting to do what I must, not wanting to be in school, not wanting to - dare I say it - learn.

Sometimes I wonder: what would happen if I stopped trying? What would happen if I stopped wanting to know everything? What would happen if I devoted myself to things that matter less to society but often more to me?

I don't know, honestly.

There was a time when I didn't need it. There was a time when I learned because it was in the books I read, because I didn't feel obligated. Now, somehow, it's become something I need to do.

Now, it eclipses me sometimes. And I will look at myself, look at what I'm doing, look at what I'm studying. And no matter how much I try to suppress the thought, it crops up anyway: Why do I even care?

I don't know. I don't know.

It's days like these when I physically cannot do my homework. But that's not the worst part. The worst is that I don't care that I can't. It doesn't matter to me.

It doesn't matter.

This scares my American self, terrifies the hell out of her. What is she if not her information? What is she if not a learning machine?

I'm tired, so very tired. Not in terms of lack of sleep necessarily, because that's normal. I'm tired because I have not rested in so long.

I have not deigned to let myself try to write a story. I don't dare. Because my studious self has learned to stay away from things at which she is less than satisfactory. I have not devoured a book in a long time. I have not painted anything in ages. I have not sat down to make something merely for myself (rather than because it will take me somewhere).

I'm not very sick, but I can't do it. I can't go to school tomorrow. It's an odd feeling. I've liked going to school all this year. It's been a good year, really it has. And today it's like I hit a wall. I don't know.

I need a day off in which to make music. Make art. Read for ages. Cut a speech piece. Do homework, but very little.

I think everyone is supposed to feel this way once in a while. But for a time this afternoon I didn't know what was happening to me. Why was I not doing homework at five thirty? Why did I have no inclination to work at eight? Why not?

Because I'm human. I'm only human. Narcissistic and haughty and ridiculous as this one of my selves is.

Human is all I am.

Marathon 2013

I don't understand what just happened. Explosions at the Boston Marathon's finish line. The area is in havoc. Nobody knows anything for sure.

My friend Yinuo posted about this on her blog, but I think I need to talk about it too.

Boston is one of my homes. I love it dearly, and the Marathon is of course an important part of our city. To have something like this happen - I just don't know what I'm supposed to think.

Right now nobody knows who did it and why. I heard that one bomb went off at the JFK Library, and I hear that another one was found at Riverside Station, which is three train stops from my house, but I don't know if anything is true. The train (or as we call it, the T) is, of course, down at the moment. Facebook is exploding, and I'm honestly terrified. Not really for myself but for other people and how close it is to me. I am not invincible, and no one I know is invincible. It takes something like this to realize that.

The worst part of this is not the injured or the dead, although both are absolutely terrible. No, the worst is that nobody knows anything for sure and nobody knows where more bombs might be found. Everybody is terrified because nothing is certain.

And another thing - it seems so horrifically planned. There are enough bombs that no one knows if there are more, and they are in strategic places. Whoever did this must have spent ages thinking about it. The fact that there is someone who will target this area and be so focused on it is truly frightening.

It seems so surreal. It's something that seems like it would never happen here - and now it has. And I don't know what I'm supposed to think anymore.

Poems and Thoughts of Israel

It's nearing one a.m. and I just spent the past hour and a half finishing a book of Hebrew poetry.

I don't know.

I've been wanting to finish it for a while, and now I need to reread it because I'm so tired that I'm not sure what stuck and what didn't.

But what did stick was beautiful. I really like this book, almost as much as Hazel loves An Imperial Affliction.

But I suddenly thought about going to visit Israel - this Wednesday as it happens - and I'm terrified as hell, honestly. How different will it feel? Will my happiness fade again? Where will I be after going back to that place?

I've forgotten so much, honestly I have. I had forgotten, until today, how the streets in Tel Aviv connect and how it felt to be there and being away from my friends and everything. It hurt, and I think I forgot that a little. Suddenly I remember all these things from the evening I got this book of poetry signed and how good I felt that night, and being close to my family, and having Hebrew all around me.

I'm kind of alarmed at how much this trip crept up on me. It was always kind of in the near future and all but never really this close. In seventy-two hours I'll already be there or close at least. It's scaring me. Deja vu to this time last year, before I changed.

But how much did I stay the same?

I don't know right now. I don't know anything right now.